All we know is that we don’t know nothing

Burger King’s joke lands because AI exists in the public imagination as a quantum entity — simultaneously powerful and pathetic. Artificial intelligence is about to take our jobs, we’re constantly told; it’s going to destroy the economy and humanity to boot. But we also know from our own experience that it’s incredibly dumb, incapable of understanding the simplest commands (hello, Siri), or telling the difference between a stop sign and a cyclist, or of not showing me nine toilet seats I might like to buy after I buy the one toilet seat I will need this decade.